ORDER

SHEDD, District Judge.

This civil rights action ( 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and supplemental state-law claims) arises from an incident in which plaintiff was mistakenly arrested pursuant to a bench warrant that was issued for his son. On defendants' motion, United States Magistrate Judge Joseph R. McCrorey has entered a Report and Recommendation ("the Report") in which he recommends that the Court enter summary judgment in defendants' favor as to all claims except plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claim against defendants Clemens and Davis, who are the officers who executed the arrest warrant. As to this latter claim, Magistrate Judge McCrorey determined that a factual issue exists so as to preclude summary judgment in favor of Clemens and Davis either on the merits or on the basis of qualified immunity. Neither plaintiff nor defendants have objected to the Report.

The Court has reviewed the Report and finds that Magistrate Judge McCrorey correctly concluded that defendants are entitled to summary judgment on those claims for which he recommended that summary judgment should be granted. Therefore, the Court will accept the Report as to all claims except the Fourth Amendment claim against Clemens and Davis. However, for the reasons set forth below, the Court finds that Magistrate Judge McCrorey incorrectly concluded that Clemens and Davis are not entitled to summary judgment on plaintiffs Fourth Amendment claim. Accordingly, the Court will also enter summary judgment against plaintiff on that claim as well.

I

Pertinent to the Fourth Amendment claim against Clemens and Davis, the record reflects that an arrest warrant was lawfully issued for an individual identified on the warrant as "Joye, Jimmie A." The warrant designated this individual's address as being "515 Hiller Rd., Chapin," and it identified him as being five feet eleven inches tall, with a weight of 155 pounds, and a birth year of 1968. In attempting to execute this warrant, Clemens and Davis went to 515 Hiller Road, where they were told that Jimmie A. Joye had moved next door to 517 Hiller Road. Clemens and Davis were further told that Jimmie A. Joye must be home because all of his vehicles were there. Clemens and Davis then went to 517 Hiller Road and arrested plaintiff. Plaintiff acknowledged that he was Jimmie A. Joye, but protested his arrest. At some point during this incident, Clemens crossed out the second "5" in the street address and changed it to a "7" to make the address read "517 Hiller Rd."

Hindsight now reveals that the subject of the warrant was actually plaintiffs son, Jimmie A. Joye, Jr., and that plaintiff was mistakenly arrested. While there were certain facts which indicated that plaintiff was not the subject of the warrant — e.g., plaintiff stands five feet eight inches tall and was born in 1939 — there is nothing in the record to indicate that at the time of the arrest either Clemens or Davis were, or should have been, specifically aware of the fact that plaintiffs son is Jimmie A. Joye, Jr., or that the subject of the warrant was plaintiffs son, rather than plaintiff. Moreover, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Clemens or Davis executed the warrant with an improper motive.

The mistaken arrest provides the basis for plaintiffs Fourth Amendment claim against Clemens and Davis. Magistrate Judge McCrorey concluded that this claim should proceed to trial because "there is a question of fact, sufficient to survive defendants' motion for summary judgment, as to whether [Clemens and Davis] had a reasonable, good faith belief that they were arresting the correct person." Elaborating on this conclusion, Magistrate Judge McCrorey stated:

Although the warrant listed Jimmy Joye as the person sought, Joye was approximately thirty years older than the birthdate listed on the warrant, he was approximately three inches shorter than the height listed on the warrant, and his driver's license differed from that listed on the warrant. Further, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the deputies failed to present him with a copy of the bench warrant, which only supports his theories. A simple check of the bench warrant should have revealed that Joye was not the person wanted in the bench warrant.

Magistrate Judge McCrorey also used this line of reasoning to deny Clemens' and Davis' assertion of qualified immunity, stating that they "fail to show that there [sic] actions were objectively reasonable where they failed to compare the information on the bench warrant with Joye and failed to give Joye a copy of the warrant."

II

As noted, Magistrate Judge McCrorey considered the significant age discrepancy between plaintiff and the person identified on the warrant, the relatively slight height discrepancy between those individuals, and the driver's license discrepancy to be sufficient to call into question the reasonableness of the Clemens' and Davis' arrest of plaintiff. At bottom, Magistrate Judge McCrorey's conclusion rests on his view that "[a] simple check of the bench warrant should have revealed that Joye was not the person wanted in the bench warrant." While there is undeniable logic in Magistrate Judge McCrorey's implicit determination that law enforcement officers have a duty to ensure that they are arresting the correct person when executing an arrest warrant, the Constitution — through § 1983 — neither compels absolute certainty in the exercise of this duty nor provides a remedy for every violation of this duty.

Indeed, it is settled that "[n]ot every mix-up in the issuance of an arrest warrant, even though it leads to the arrest of the wrong person with attendant inconvenience and humiliation, automatically constitutes a constitutional violation for which a remedy may be sought under . . . § 1983." Moreover, "[i]n executing a warrant, officers are not required to investigate independently every claim of innocence," or to accept claims of mistaken identity by the arrestee. "[S]ufficient probability, not certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment. . . ."

A.

On appeal, the officer argued that the verdict should have been set aside because Ms. Brown was arrested pursuant to facially valid warrants. The Fifth Circuit rejected this argument, recognizing that the case boiled down to a factual question concerning the officer's motives:

On [Brown's] theory of the case, [the officer] altered the warrant so as to subject her to arrest despite the absence of any evidence connecting Tammy Jean Brown to the Tamie Brown specified in the warrant. As we have said, the jury might reasonably have believed this theory of the facts. On that theory, the [officer's] actions did not involve a case of mistaken identity. Instead, they constituted a classic Fourth Amendment violation: a decision to arrest an individual without a valid arrest warrant for that person and absent any circumstances that would justify such an arrest. Indeed, [the officer's] alterations to the warrants support an inference that he . . . knew that the person he wanted to arrest was not the person described in the warrants. . . .

The jury was justified in finding that [the officer] knew Brown was not the woman described by the arrest warrants. The existence of a facially valid warrant for the arrest of one person does not authorize a police officer to effect the arrest of another person, even if the officer believes the second person guilty of the first person's crimes and even if the two people have similar names. The fact that officers may sometimes arrest the second person by an honest mistake does not constitute a legal excuse for the conduct of an officer who makes no such mistake.

In Brown, the Fifth Circuit also questioned in dicta whether the warrants were valid after the officer altered them, noting that "[i]t is at least arguable that by changing the description on the warrants, [the officer] destroyed the only valid warrants that had existed." The Court need not decide whether it is sound policy for an officer to alter an arrest warrant, or whether a certain amount or type of alteration renders an arrest warrant invalid (although it surely does), since the narrow circumstance present here — i.e., alteration of the address on an arrest warrant — clearly appears not to invalidate a warrant.

B.

In Thompson, an undercover drug investigation supplied information necessary for an arrest warrant of a person originally identified as "Lisa," who was later identified (incorrectly) during the investigation as "Lisa Ann Thompson." Officers who had not participated in the investigation executed the warrant and arrested Lisa Ann Thompson. At Ms. Thompson's initial court appearance, the undercover police officer saw her for the first time and realized that the wrong person had been arrested. The charges against Ms. Thompson were dropped, and she filed a § 1983 lawsuit. In affirming dismissal of Ms. Thompson's lawsuit, the Fourth Circuit held:

While there are details which with hindsight might have alerted the undercover agent or the officer serving the warrant that Lisa Ann Thompson might not be the person sought, it simply demands too much to expect police officers, on the basis of slight discrepancies of height (5' 5'" as against 5' 7'") and weight or in color of eyes (blue versus brown) and hair (blond as opposed to brown), to abandon obtention or execution of a warrant on someone who, for other strong indications (identity of first name, confirmation of the first name by a police informant, close connection with vehicle registered in Lisa Ann Thompson's name), meets the warrant's description.

Concerning Ms. Thompson's claim against Officer Miller, the Seventh Circuit noted that because of the "discrepancy between the description in the warrant and the appearance of the person named in the warrant and arrested by the officer executing it, [it] ha[d] to decide whether such a discrepancy shows, at least prima facie, that the arresting officer violated the arrested person's constitutional rights." The Seventh Circuit decided:

Section 1983 is a tort statute. It punishes wrongful conduct. There is no allegation that Miller intentionally or even negligently, or otherwise wrongfully, deprived Miss Johnson of her liberty or property, and we will not infer wrongfulness from a mere discrepancy in the description. Those responsible for the discrepancy may be liable, but they are not defendants in this case. We do not think the arresting officer, Miller, can be said to have acted wrongfully merely because the warrant he executed contained a description that did not match the appearance of Miss Johnson. For Miller the main thing was that the name was right. The purpose of the description was to help him, as the arresting officer, identify her and he needed no help since she acknowledged that she was the person named in the warrant. If an officer executing an arrest warrant must do so at peril of damage liability under section 1983 if there is any discrepancy between the description in the warrant and the appearance of the person to be arrested, many a criminal will slip away while the officer anxiously compares the description in the warrant with the appearance of the person named in it and radios back any discrepancies to his headquarters for instructions.

Recognizing that Ms. Thompson's claim against Officer Sutcliff presented a more difficult situation, the Seventh Circuit nonetheless concluded that he also was not liable under § 1983:

The execution of a warrant by an officer who if he were more careful might have noticed that the warrant had been issued by mistake is not the stuff out of which a proper federal case is made. The Fourth Amendment and section 1983 have higher objects in view than getting arresting officers to backstop the mistakes of their superiors. This lawsuit under section 1983 duplicates, as the plaintiffs counsel acknowledged at the oral argument of this appeal, state tort remedies for false arrest, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, defamation, and negligence. The conduct alleged in the complaint is outrageous, but it is also fully actionable under state law. It is not actionable under section 1983. . . .

This is not to say that police officers can run amok, without fearing liability under section 1983, so long as they have a piece of paper in their hands called an arrest warrant. If the complaint in this case had alleged that Miller or Sutcliff had procured a warrant that he knew to be based on mistaken identity, in an effort to deprive Miss Johnson of her liberty or property, it might be a very different case. . . . But that is not the allegation. The allegation is that the officers — Sutcliff perhaps carelessly — failed to notice that the description in the warrant did not match the appearance of Miss Johnson. This is not enough to bring section 1983 into play.

In light of these cases, the Court can only conclude, as a matter of law, that Clemens and Davis are not liable to plaintiff under § 1983 because his claim fails on the merits and, alternatively, because they are entitled to qualified immunity. Clemens and Davis were presented with a facially valid arrest warrant for "Jimmie A. Joye" of "515 Hiller Road." When they arrived at 515 Hiller Road, they were told that Jimmie A. Joye used to live there, but that he had moved next door to 517 Hiller Road. They were further told that Jimmie A. Joye was at home at that time. When they went to 517 Hiller Road, plaintiff identified himself as Jimmie A. Joye. Given these circumstances, particularly plaintiffs verification of his identity, the physical description on the warrant became much less important, if at all. As Thompson teaches, an officer is not required "to abandon obtention or execution of a warrant on someone who, for other strong indications . . . meets the warrant's description."

III